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Democracy & the Rule of Law

You Call This a Democracy? by Paul Kivel

You Call This a Democracy? is a penetrating and troubling look at how the U.S. ruling class and the power elite dominate wealth, power and decision-making in all aspects of our lives and institutions.

Arguing that the United States has always had a ruling class, this book does not focus on the current administration or rogue corporations, but presents a deeper, longer-term analysis of how the ruling class has created and uses the Constitution, corporations and the courts, as well as a host of other mechanisms such as tax laws, wars, buffer zones, and distractions, to dominate our society and accumulate wealth.

Myth America: Democracy vs. Capitalism

Myth America exposes the lag of major American institutions behind the demands of the 21st century and the reinforcement of this lag by the media and schools miseducating the public.

The author shows how the priorities of these institutions are undermining rather than achieving ecological sustainability and social justice.

Gaveling Down the Rabble: How Free Trade Is Stealing Our Democracy

In Gaveling Down the Rabble, author/activist Jane Anne Morris explores a century and a half of efforts by corporations and the courts to undermine local democracy in the United States by using a “free trade” model.

It was that very nineteenth-century model that was later adopted globally by corporations to subvert local attempts at protecting the environment and citizen and worker health.

Challenging Corporate Rule: The Petition to Revoke UNOCAL’s Charter as a Guide to Citizen Action

The complete text of the historic complaint by a coalition of some 25 local, state and national women’s environmental and other civil society organizations to the California Attorney General to revoke the corporate charter of Union Oil Company of California (UNOCAL). The foreword by Ronnie Dugger, Chair of the Alliance for Democracy, and introduction by author Robert W. Benson, Professor of Law at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, seek to place charter revocation in the broader context of the struggle for democratic control of giant corporations.

The introduction also provides concrete suggestions on challenging corporate rule in other states. A practical guide to citizen action against corporations, and must reading for all who cherish the democratic ideals on which this country was founded and who are prepared to join the struggle for their realization.

Manifesto for Global Democracy: Two Essays on Imperialism and the Struggle for Freedom

The U.S. ideology of Manifest Destiny, now at the core of the U.S. assertion of the right to intervene anywhere and occupy any place, in the name of freedom, security, and civilization, is akin to South African apartheid.

The roots of this exclusionary and violent concept of freedom are explored in the first essay in this book, “On Freedom and Equality,” and contrasted with the universal idea of freedom, based on equality, espoused by Mahatma Gandhi and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The borders between capitalist and developing countries separate people in the way Blacks and Whites in South Africa and in the United States were forcibly segregated not so long ago. An end to this global segregation is central to the struggle for global democracy and human rights.

Rule of Power or Rule of Law?: An Assessment of US Policy and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties

Rule of Power or Rule of Law? assesses U.S. compliance with nine treaties addressing some of the most urgent global security threats, ranging from proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to global climate change.

Global Aggression: The Case for World Standards and Bold Us Action Challenging

An expose by INFACT (now Corporate Accountability International) of the role of the US-based tobacco corporations Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco in aggressively promoting tobacco internationally, contributing to the deaths of 3.5 million people worldwide per year.

Filled with examples of manipulation of public policy and big Tobacco’s disregard for advertising restrictions in other countries, Global Aggression builds a case for a combination of consumer pressure and world standards to stop the spread of tobacco-related diseases and hold tobacco transnationals accountable.

The Rule of Property

In The Rule of Property, Karen Coulter offers a groundbreaking new perspective on the rise of private property over the public domain by linking two popular streams of thought: the legal history of the rise of corporate power developed by POCLAD (Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy) together with the new thinking about corporate encroachment on the ecological and social commons.

Coulter, a member of POCLAD, is also a forest activist who watchdogs public lands against corporate theft.

Inhuman Rights: Western System and Global Human Rights Abuse

Winin Pereira’s ‘Inhuman Rights: The Western System and Global Human Rights Abuse’ presents a sharply critical and revealing account of how the West has actually misused conventionally defined human rights set forth in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights to promote and maintain its political and economic hegemony over the rest of the world.

The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield the Constitution

Financial and business corporations throw millions of dollars at think tanks, lobbyists and universities, exploiting writers and artists galore. Their assignment?

To twist words, gnarl symbols, sell lies, whip people into line. The Elite Consensus fingers the American Enterprise Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chamber of Commerce, the Heritage Foundation, and many other “educational” corporations, which men of property have unleashed on this planet. The author shows how these corporate con artists teach us our history, elect our representatives, write our laws, define ideas and frame public policy debates. Originally published in 2000 by Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project as The Corporate Consensus.

Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy: A Book of History & Strategies

In these 70 essays, speeches, sermons and screeds, POCLADers probe: corporations as “legal persons”; corporate social responsibility as a ploy; strategies for amending state corporation codes and challenging judge-made laws; and much, much more.

Building Unions: Past, Present and Future

Your union local or activist community group is doing good work against one corporate assault after another.

But your successes aren’t making the next campaigns easier. Or challenging public officials who enable corporate usurpations.

You’re itching to take action.

The Abuse of Power: Social Performance of Multinational Corporations – Case of Union Carbide

The enormous size and global reach of multinational corporations make it increasingly difficult for any one country to hold them accountable when they behave recklessly.

This book demonstrates just how serious and urgent the problem has become by exposing Union Carbide’s record of abuse of its workers and the environment. Abuse of Power examines the inadequacy of existing mechanisms and presents new ways of curbing corporate irresponsibility.

War and Peace and Democracy: Four Essays That Ask Why Again? And Where Goes The Peace Movement After Iraq?

Of all the possible responses to the attacks of September 11, why did the U.S. government choose war? What can a reactivated peace movement learn from the Iraq war and from 20th Century social movement history to prepare us to do more than react to the demands of empire?

In other words: how can we fundamentally challenge the power of corporations to turn our government against us and march another generation off to war?

Taking Care of Business

From the Preface: Corporations cause harm every day. Why do their harms go unchecked?

How can they dictate what we produce, how we work, what we eat, drink and breathe?